SAN QUENTIN — California prepared Monday night to execute its third death row inmate in as many months while for the first time having an anesthesiologist on hand to minimize the condemned man’s pain.

Michael Angelo Morales, 46, was moved to a “death watch” cell at 6 p.m. after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to grant a stay and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger again denied his request for clemency in the torture, rape and murder of a 17-year-old Lodi girl 25 years ago.

Morales would be the 14th murderer and the first Hispanic to be put to death since California reinstated the death penalty in 1977. He appealed to the high court on Monday to block his looming execution, claiming that the lethal injection the state uses to administer capital punishment amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.

But after Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy reviewed the case, the full court denied Morales’ final appeal, according to court spokesman Ed Turner. With Morales’ last avenue for a reprieve exhausted, one of his attorneys, former Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr, then pleaded with Schwarzenegger for a second time to commute the death sentence.

The governor once again refused, citing “the record and totality of circumstances in this case.”

Morales, a father of three grown children born before he was sent to San Quentin at age 23, elected not to have any relatives witness his execution, prison spokesman Vernell Crittendon said.

Under a new procedure ordered by a federal judge last week, however, prison officials retained an anesthesiologist to be in the death chamber to certify that Morales would be unconscious from a sedative before another doctor administered a paralyzing agent and the drug designed to stop Morales’ heart.

The change was made after Morales and his attorneys argued that the three-part lethal injection cocktail used in California and 35 other states violated the Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. They said a prisoner would feel excruciating pain from the last two chemicals if he were not fully sedated.

The execution, which had been planned for just after midnight, was delayed for at least an hour to give the anesthesiologists additional training, Crittendon said.

Morales was sentenced to death for killing Terri Winchell, the teenager he attacked with a hammer, stabbed and left to die half-naked in a vineyard. Morales plotted the killing with a gay cousin who was jealous of Winchell’s relationship with the cousin’s male lover. The cousin, Ricky Ortega, now 44, was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Unlike the last two inmates to be executed, Morales admitted to the crime that put him on death row. But in a petition for clemency that Schwarzenegger first denied on Friday, he claimed that he killed Winchell because he was high on PCP and alcohol.

After the murder, Morales said, he became a penitent Christian who tried to use his mistakes to keep his three children out of trouble.

Besides the presence of an anesthesiologist, Morales’ case was different from the previous 13 executions in another way. Earlier this month, the judge who imposed the death sentence on him in 1983 asked the governor to spare Morales because he no longer believed the credibility of a jailhouse informant whose testimony helped land Morales on death row. The informant said Morales boasted of the crime in Spanish, a language he doesn’t speak.

Starr said that every time sentencing judges in California made such recommendations they were honored by previous governors.

“Overriding such opinions,” Starr wrote, “is not only tantamount to thumbing one’s nose at the well-reasoned decision of the trial judge, it shows what will reasonably be viewed as disrespect for our system of government and our respective roles in that great and enduring system.”

The American Medical Association, the American Society of Anesthesiologists and the California Medical Association all opposed the anesthesiologists’ participation as unethical and unprofessional.

Associated Press Writers David Kravets and Michelle Locke contributed to this story.

SAN JOSE -- Grenades were discovered at an estate sale Monday, prompting the evacuation of about 10 homes near the San Jose Country Club, according to the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office. Deputies were called to the 300 block of Gordon Avenue, near Greenside Drive, about 4:10 p.m., said Sgt. Rich Glennon. Get breaking news with our free mobile app....

The seven adult children of David and Louise Turpin, the couple accused of abusing and imprisoning them for years at their Perris home, have been released from the hospital, their attorney said Monday.